Stories about: IETF

Unified communications offers the potential for anywhere, anytime connectivity between employees and the enterprise. But as the InteropLabs hotstage team found in piecing together more than a dozen commercial and open-source voice, data and messaging platforms, the technology is still at a relatively early stage, and today represents more promise than practice.

Fighting insomnia one night, all Robert Topolski wanted to do was send digital recordings of 19th-century barbershop quartet music to some friends.

While no one predicted a "Mad Max"-style apocalyptic catastrophe, experts at FutureNet this week nonetheless said that Internet architecture will face stiff challenges over the next few years that could put significant strain on the Web's effectiveness.

At this year's RSA Conference, there were fewer sessions and displays devoted to NAC than at previous conferences, but interest in the technology still seemed to run high among 2008 attendees.

Is the iPhone killing the 'Net? That's the question posed by Oxford University Professor Jonathan Zittrain in his new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It .Â

Arch Rock has released new software and hardware to simplify creating large-scale, distributed wireless sensor networks and linking them with the enterprise IP backbone.

The Internet engineering community will be eating its own dog food tonight. For one hour, the 1,250 network experts at the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting will be able to access the Internet only through IPv6. The IETF created IPv6 in the mid-1990s, but this upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol has not yet been widely deployed -- even by the technology's biggest proponents here. Network World National Correspondent Carolyn Duffy Marsan talked with IETF Chair Russ Housley about the group's IPv6 experiment, why the transition to IPv6 is taking so long, and whether the IETF leadership is starting to panic about IPv4 addresses running out. Here are excerpts from their conversation:

Many network and security administrators have implemented or are considering network access control (NAC) to support corporate security policies, but doubts remain about the technology.

The Internet's leading standards bodies have joined forces to clarify a set of next-generation network transport specifications that critics warned could cause massive interoperability problems for service providers.

If you're studying for Cisco exams and just about to tear your hair out, don't fret, there are many others in the same position, and many of them are writing up their experiences in their blogs and passing along hints and tips. Even if you're a CCIE pro, there's always room for personal improvement and expansion. With that in mind we've scoured the Web to bring you our top 20 most useful Web resources for Cisco networking professionals.

Internet policymakers are considering sweeping changes to the way they distribute IP addresses that could allow network operators to make money by transferring unused blocks of IPv4 address space to others in need. One result could be lessened incentive to move to IPv6 any time soon.